On reduction

Reflection overall.
I have learned a lot in this course, and also in my Web Design course over the last few months. A lot about educational theory, but perhaps more importantly, I have learned a lot about the application of theory in a practical context.
Add to this the obvious lessons of anyone who is getting back into study after some time away,like how to better manage time, taking care to address the task in hand, juggling and integrating work assignments with learning tasks, learning how to better write to a tight word limit, referencing etc, and I would say this has been a productive few months in terms of what I have taken out of it.
The theory has been quite copious at certain points in the course. That is, there have been a lot of readingson analysis, design, evaluation, assessment, constructivist and other learning theories, and even the theory of correct APA application.
Perhaps some of the most important things I have learned have been about my own learning. I have learned for example that when I write a paper that starts out at 5700 word (including references)and then reduce it, to meet a word limit, to 2700 words, plus references, the process involved actually helps me to arrange my thoughts more clearly, to see associations I hadn't noticed before and therefore to constructmy knowledge as I procede.
Not that my assignments represent any apex of concise and lucid writing, but they seem to be more meaningfulat the end of the course than they were at the start. Funny enough I really enjoyed the process of reducing,distilling the meaning of my last paper into something meaningful from something that just had a lot of wordsand concepts. Having said that, please don't ask me to reduce and distil, this learning reflection. It is a bit of work doing that.

Nearing the end

Well I have learned a lot from this course so far.
A lot of educational theory.
Before doing this course I had seen lots of examples of attempts to produce student centered learning. While these always seemed to resonate as logical and useful, I really never had a clearly defined learning paradigm to explain them. That I guess is one of the main things that this course has given me (FET5601).
I have often found the actual work of reading, note taking, analysing, associating, and then synthesising new understanding into a comprehensible project/assignment to be a challenge. Even overwhelming at times. This has certainly got me focused and kept me away from hobbies and pastimes. But I would say that it is worth it.

One really beneficial thing that has come out of all this recently have been discussions with my colleagues here are work. I was really impressed with Paul McLeod in his understanding of this material. He had a brief look and one of my assignments and pointed out that I had spelled one of the author's names wrong. Now Paul is a DEd. student so I guess he has done a good deal of reading around the topic of learning design etc. But he actual knows the authors by name and more or less has a handle on their positions on various learning paradigms etc. I thought that was quite impressive. This was also a nice motivation to me. It made me realize that with time these things will no doubt become quite second nature to me. If I keep up the studies.

I am just about to hand in my final project for FET5601. This time I made sure to have a good look at the rubric before passing it in. That is something that I learned from a previous assignment.

Some reflection from assignments

I am working on the final project now for FET5601 and have some reflection from various assessments so far which I would like to include here.

Reflection of Analysis

My previous experience with analysis is in systems development. This is much like the ADDIE model so studying this theory of analysis in this project has consolidated that knowledge. I am particularly struck with the need to consider individual student learning and I am confident that combining my experience and new understandings I can improve data gathering and analysis by targeting; learner needs and attributes of the learners, learning tasks and strategies assessment and costs. I have also been impressed with the need to help learners construct their knowledge by providing appropriate learning activities and opportunities for them to reflect on their learning, to revisit and improve.

By using a theory driven approach to analysis within an ADDIE framework, my analysis will point to a better fit of learning activities to the students and the course objectives. I expect this could also lead to some recommendations for changes in these objectives to help improve the quality of learning.

Reflections of on my current practice and strategies in design

I use varied strategies depending on the topic and even depending on what I have in hand in terms of pre-developed materials.

As recently as 2 years ago, I was developing blended learning modules complete with discussion forums and on-line readings and using these to support problem based learning tasks. But then I had direct instructions from management to do so.

I am now in a radically different situation with intensive (in terms of content) course outlines and detailed instructional materials provided. These course outlines create the constraint of heavy content loading. It is easy to focus on the content at the expense of the learner. I hope that I don’t do that but there is a temptation to do so.

I want to use a more student centred approach for developing delivery, media and materials that will still cover course requirements. This has been difficult due to some inertia in coming to grips with the new workplace with a different emphasis. I need to be much more self motivated in moving toward student-centred design. I look on this project as an opportunity to develop the theoretical and practical background and confidence necessary to do that.

Conflicts between readings and current practice and links of theory to practice and key concepts

My current practice represents halting steps on the road to constructivist, learner-centred design that would be supported by modern educational theory. Due to previous ignorance of current theory and constraints of time and content, my delivery and course design lacked a learner focus which I now plan to emphasise. For example;

· building learning networks and ecologies, (Seimens, 2005),

· focus on what the student does, not what the teacher does or what the student is (Biggs, 2001)

· trap students into learning with aligned teaching and PBL (Biggs, 2001)

· develop heighted self-awareness in learner and allow for collaborative learning (Reushle et al 1999)

· provide authentic in-context assessment (Boud, 1998)

· develop, borrow and use reusable learning objects (Oliver, 2002)

· use assessment to facilitate learning (Isaacs, 2001)

Each of the above are addressed in the table below under the heading Content learning media and assessment.

Reflection of evaluation

My previous evaluation experience has been pragmatic and organization driven with little consideration (from my point of view) to theory. I have had some experiences in gaining feedback from Program Advisory Committees; I have also participated in developing, distributing and analyzing graduate questionnaires as input into program quality reviews. I have always considered this to be a TQM function and have applied TQM terminology to this.

Through computer systems training I have used the Systems Development Life Cycle (very similar to ADDIE) employing a systems driven approach which considered customers (learners), other stakeholders and systems. Evaluation was formative and summative but was neutral with regards to learning theory. Problems came in the form of missed opportunities to evaluate in a more educationally valid way by integrating educational theory and understanding into evaluation of learning centred design.

I have found the readings to be complementary and to build on my previous practice of evaluation. They have challenged me but more in a need to extend rather than to repudiate previous practice and they have given me good direction for theoretically sound course evaluation in the future.

References

Biggs, J. (2001). The reflective institution: Assuring and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. Higher Education, 41 (3), 221-238, Retrieved April 14, 2009 from http://springerlink.metapress.com.ezprozy.usq.au/content/m2472106v357t754/fulltext.pdf

Boud, D. (1998). Assessment and learning – unlearning bad habits of assessment. ‘Effective Assessment at University’, Conference, University of Queensland, 4-5 Nov 1998.

Isaacs, G. (2001). Assessment for learning, Teaching and Educational Development Institute, The University of Queensland, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Series

Oliver, R. (2002). A teaching and learning perspective on learning objects. Retrieved April 14, 2009 from http://elrond.scam.ecu.edu.au/oliver/2002/neodepaper.pdf

Seimens, G. (2005). Learning development cycle: Bridging learning design and modern knowledge needs. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from http://instructor.aviation.ca/content/view/130/71/

Its the Rubric stupid

In FET5601 we have studied a number of topics in the last month including assessment and evaluation. So we touched on criterion referenced assessment.

This of course was quite familiar to me in practice, if not in theory. I have used a lot of criterion referenced rubrics for projects and assignments in Dubai in the last several years.

Thus the irony when I realised that I had totally missed significant criteria on the rubrics of both courses, FET5601 and FET562. Duh.. Talk about feeling dumb.

So.. being one who wants to learn from my mistakes I try to draw some salient lessons from this. The obvious lesson is of course, double check the rubric before submitting any assignment.

In this next round of assignments my natural knee-jerk reaction is to include points from the rubric in my response explicitly and to make the assignment a 'response to the rubric'. This of course is safer than ignoring the rubric but could lead to a rather stilted response. It would affect the structure and perhaps not is a good way.

The other lesson to consider is how to make sure my students don't miss parts of the rubric. In the past I have handed out the rubric as the assignment definition. i.e. the assignment was the rubric.

I am reflecting on this at the moment. This is a graduate level course, we are supposed to be able to research, gather information and synthesis it into something informative useful and original. This requires some creativity which can not be confined to the structure implied by following a rubric unflinchingly.

The more I consider this, the more I recognise a weakness I have in scholarly writing. This has always been a bit of an achilles heal for me. I am pretty good at researching information. But I tend to be in to much of a hurry to put the words to paper without a careful consideration of interrelations of new ideas, theories, previous practice, and understanding, constucting a new whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. This is after all in the end the purpose of enquiry and review.

I beleive a weakness can become a strength when the focus for change is there. This is the point of this post and will exercise my mind for some time.

So what can I do?

• always double check and consider the rubric before submitting any assignment
• look for ways integrate the rubric into a whole
  

Resting and learning

I am starting a one week holiday this afternoon sometime.

I had to push really hard but I have got right up to date with my assignments readings etc. I am getting a real affirmation of the benefits of staying on track.

At the same time I am enjoying the refreshing nature of having a break. I only went to the gym twice this week. it was five times last week. I just physically needed that rest.

not much time to discuss. More later.

Metacognition, technology and learning

This last week or so have been pretty hard going with the learning in these courses. I have done a lot of reading in 5601 but it is really hard to put it all together and synthesize something meaningful out of them to post something meaningful for the starter wrapper exercise.

I have been taking a little bit of luxury I feel in taking a little extra time to ponder and consider what I have been learning. I have also been thinking about a lot of changes I could and even need to make to my teaching and to my design and materials choices.

Two days ago I didn't even know what metacognition meant, now here I am pondering it. I am going to ponder a bit more on how to put the new ideas I have encountered into practice, in particular with my assignment, then I will do the starter wrapper thing, then I'll come back to this again. Hopefully this can all be done in the next couple of days.

I have felt this week that I have really been bootstrapping, as in starting from scratch a lot. This is probably a lot to do with hitting a wall physically. I took a 4 day break from my exercise routine, (2 extra days after the weekend cos I don't exercise on weekends anyways). This was hard to deal with and I do think that the physical and cognitive interrelate quite a bit.

My highlights from this weeks metacognition, my understanding of my own learning and knowing of my knowing are as follows: Assessment should be much more than just a normative (bad) or even just a summative thing (necessary) but should also be formative and when it needs to be summative it should be mixed. I suppose the aha in this is that there really are great opportunities for learning from assessment feedback and it really is a shame to miss these. But then consider pure formative assessment (practice assessments, comparison to exemplars etc) these really have a powerful opportunity for learning.

Seimens learning domains I mentioned in my previous post, these seem to almost have a requirement for technology in order to reach domains of; accretion, emergence and aquisition. I can also see a strong link between new technologies and developing learning ecologies, especially considering asynchonous discussion forums.

Biggs discussion of quality was very reminiscent of TQM but bring this into the education realm. I liked the prospective / retrosspective dialectic, this was very TQM like. the levels of teaching and learning model I found to be quite enlightening and I can see the benefit of focussing more on level 3 what the student does.
Reushle et. al I think will be quite useful and practical when designing and building onn-line learning modules. Crowe et al made a good point for peer assessment which i think I can use with a mix of PBL and discussion forums in my project. I will definitely also be using Critirion referenced assessment.

Aha Design

Yes I am well into design now.
I have just submitted (2 days ago) my analysis discussion for 5601 and started doing the readings on Design.
I have also just about finished my Web site Design Critique for 5621.
It was a long hard weekend. I wish I could say that all of this has its own reward and it is totally compensates for the fact that I haven't even sat on a motorcycle all weekend but the truth is I feel kind of deprived at the moment.

However I have had some learning.

5601..
I have just finished reading a long article by Seimens (2005) Learning development cycle: Bridging learning design and modern knowledge needs. The learning module notes promised that the design phase is where the real fun would start in the course. I guess I could say that I agree. Reading this article I had numerous aha moments as I was able to connect with the theory in terms of my own teaching and learning experiences.

The Learning Development Cycles and its 4 domains; Transmission, Accretion, Aquisition, and Emergence all rang so true to me in considering my own experiences. Funnily enough a lot of the theory was directly related to web communities like Dubai4x4, thumpertalk etc. These sites provide informal models for Aquisition and to a lesser extems Emergency, Accretion and even Transmission. I can see that revisiting this material will be very helpful for me when I go to design tools to aid in blended learning modules such as the project I have planned for FET5601.

5621
The Web Design assignment that I just finished was a lot of work. One of the main learning points for me actually relates back to the other course. That is, the importance of networks and ecology in some learning. A large part of that assignment was to post to the web thoughts on the design of a group of 3 web sites according to (in my case, web standards). Posting publically does put some pressure on one to prepare properly, it also provides opportunities to learn unexpectedly and to develop social skills. The need to rely on others for part of the learning was underlined here.. In LDC theory I guess that would be seen as nodes in a network and ecology.